Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Rating the Super Hunks #2: Booster Gold

Last week Hal Jordan rated a mighty 31/40 on the official and very scientific Hunk-o-Meter. This week's challenger...

Michael Carter, aka Booster Gold

Costume/Appearance: Booster's costume is sweet. The yellow and blue combo is reminiscent of a sports uniform, which reflects Booster's athletic past. The goggles would probably look weirder in real life than they do on the page, but I think he makes them work. The headpiece doesn't obstruct his boyish blond mop of hair, and it's nice that his hair colour matches the yellow in his uniform exactly. Honestly, blond is not usually my favourite flavour, but Booster rocks it. The tight costume looks best when without the cape, and fortunately the cape rarely gets worn. He's got an athlete's build despite the fact that he doesn't seem to do anything physical.

I like that so many elements of the uniform are unnecessary. They were all chosen for style. Booster knows what looks cool. Plus, a giant star in the middle of the chest is great. I'm pretty sure I designed a very similar uniform for myself when I was seven.Unfortunately, points must be deducted because he sells ad space on his uniform.

7/10

Alter-ego: Michael Carter was a star football player in the 25th century. That's definitely sexy. Then he was disgraced when he was busted for betting on his own team. Not sexy. So he got a job as a night watchman at the Superhero Museum. Then he got the idea to steal a bunch of stuff from there so he could travel back to the 20th century and be a superhero using all the stolen gadgets. While there's nothing particularly sexy about that, it is kind of clever.

Carter is basically a down-on-his-luck jock who got in a little over his head. Despite that, he handles himself reasonably well and even got to be a member of the Justice League. And, yes, being a member of the JLA increases sex appeal.

Booster means well. His intentions were less-than-noble when he first came to our century, but he has had heroic moments since. He believed in Ted Kord when no one else did, and maybe if people had listened to Booster, Ted would still be alive. This, of course, does not excuse the fact that Booster is pretty dumb.Booster is a businessman, and I respect that. Although I don't approve of him cluttering up his costume with ads, as a former ad sales rep I am impressed that he landed big sponsorship contracts like Ferris Air.The name Michael Carter is alright. It's got the two-first-names thing going for it, but he sadly isn't even the hottest hero with Carter in his name.

5/10

Sexiness of powers: Booster has a pretty awesome armory of powers. Unfortunately, they are all stolen. Even if we overlook this, we still have to consider that all of his powers come from objects. He does, however, travel through time. Not technically a superpower, but definitely cool.I think I can include Skeets in this section. Booster is followed around by a security robot named Skeets who traveled with him from the 25th century. Skeets would be annoying on a date. I'm not even talking about the new evil Skeets. To date Booster Gold means a relationship that's a little crowded. I mean, sure, we all wish our boyfriends had know-it-all, futuristic robots for friends, but in reality, it probably wouldn't be so cool.

5/10

Day Job: Booster Gold is a thief and a shill. Not really as good as being a test pilot, I'm afraid.

1/10Cons: Booster Gold's hero name is so childish it's almost brilliant. Unfortunately, he only got the moniker when president Ronald Regan screwed up the name Michael had chosen for himself: Goldstar. Goldstar is a crappy name. Michael loses points for that. He's frequently hard up for money, and he doesn't have many friends these days. One is dead, the other is evil (and, as previously mentioned, a robot). I'll go a little easy on him because that whole Supernova stunt was pretty neat.

I can't really be too hard on Booster, because he IS adorable after all, but I'm actually more of a Ted fan. But he DOES have a very nice costume, and the whole flight and power shield thing are quite useful.

Yes, he's vain, frequently silly, and completely immature, but Booster's had a rather rough time of it lately, so I'm willing to cut him some slack.

Nope...it's definitely not just you. I totally agree and was just talking about that today. I'm going to see where his new series goes for a bit and then he will likely get re-rated. I mean...he's a total dreamboat now!

I don't know if you come back and read the comments on older posts, but I hope you do. I think you need to update the Booster Gold rating, I mean have you checked out the abs on him in Booster Gold 12, the man was rocking that Elvis costume.